Gardening David Wheeler
WINTER GREENS
With our retinas still aglow after a few months of vintage autumn colour, we are left with bare twiggery and 50 shades of green. From now until deciduous trees and shrubs expand their leaf buds in March and April, we must take comfort in whatever verdancy remains.
Worry not. This isn’t a plea for the widespread planting of conifers in the garden, some of which, pleasingly, among a largely brutish and gargantuan brigade, do have enviable grace, composure and manageable proportions.
Instead, I’m considering broadleaf evergreens with a gloss that does its best to sparkle on the dreariest of winter days.
Take, for example, award-winning, well-behaved, small- to medium-sized Sarcococca hookeriana from China and the Himalayas. One of the commonly named Christmas boxes, it’s in the Buxus (boxwood) family but isn’t threatened by the two currently rampant destructive forces: box-moth caterpillars and blight.
It’s hardy enough throughout the British Isles, although wise gardeners will site it against a wall, where a degree or two of extra warmth will boost the glorious scent of its small, white flowers at this time of year. Self-descriptive ‘Purple Stem’ has added colour interest.
Despite hailing from Mexico and south-west USA, the hardy, winterflowering, evergreen Choisya ternata freely covers itself with sprays of white, sweetly scented blossom in early spring and often again from late autumn for a few more weeks.
Its other chief joy is its aromatic foliage when crushed, which makes it a pleasure to clip if it begins to outgrow its allotted space.
Unless you wear sunglasses in
December, it’s best to avoid a variety dubbed ‘Sundance’, with very bright yellow foliage.
The daphnes take us into an altogether more sophisticated (and, sadly, more expensive) world. Many are famed for their cold-season perfume.
Pink-flowered, all-round winner Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’, raised and named for his wife Jacqui in 1982 by Alan Postill, ace propagator at the world-famous Hillier Nurseries in Hampshire, is described as being a ‘splendid and very hardy form … flowering when in full leaf … with a powerful fragrance’. There’s just time to pop it onto your Christmas-present list.
Because of their prickly, holly-like leaves, mahonias are often sited away from paths. Fortunately, the scented ones can distribute their bouquet far and wide on a slight breeze, allowing them to be appreciated while you’re standing out of harm’s way. They all bear yellow flowers.
M aquifolium (the Oregon grape, so called for its decorative, blue-black berries) is a low-growing spreader – useful for difficult corners where few other plants would thrive.
My particular fondness is for the taller-growing varieties under the name Mahonia x media – less scented but stately, with ruffs of handsome, pinnate leaves and terminal clusters of long, lax racemes in late autumn and winter.
I’d suggest ‘Buckland’, ‘Lionel Fortescue’ or the shorter-growing varieties ‘Underway’ and ‘Winter Sun’.
Larger, sweet-smelling evergreens include osmanthus, a group of shrubs that can extend to a height of about 12 feet. O x burkwoodii (pictured) is terrific. Its minute flower buds, scattered over the entire plant at this time of the year, won’t open for another couple of months – but when they do, to reveal tiny, white, star-like florets, you’ll want to bottle the fragrance.
Hollies cannot be overlooked in this season. Choose them now, when they’re berrying; if space is restricted, consider dwarf cultivars such as ‘Burford Nana’, ‘Rotunda’ and ‘Caressa’.
Finally – how could I not? – mistletoe. But you can’t choose this parasite. It has to choose you.